


Mind Reader

by Papaveri



Series: Rete Mirabile [3]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Body Horror, Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 00:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3468143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papaveri/pseuds/Papaveri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fine print of emotion is always obvious to her - not a detail, but blinding evidence (this is not necessarily a good thing)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mind Reader

Lyon speaks of strength as if swallowing medicine (and Eirika can taste the guilt and wounded pride in her mouth as much as he can), his practice sword on his lap like an open book. He keeps his hands on it, his fingernails clicking on metal like miniature bells, and he opens them, he opens, he opens his smile and his posture, when she praises him.

_ He doesn't light up like that when Ephraim tells him _ , she thinks. There's something else in his face when he talks to him, something dark and hidden and telling like clues pointing to a murderer.

“By the way, Eirika, if you don't mind”, he says; he's still catching his breath, “can I give you this?”

Lyon takes her hand in his to give her something enveloped in a cotton scarf (he's got such soft palms, slightly warmer where the rough handle of the sword chafed his skin), but when she opens the package he doesn't look at her.

The earrings shine on her hands and she feels something weird, something honeyed, overly sweet and cloying and cool at the back of her throat (she's understood before, but she doesn't want to say anything).

“You shouldn't have, they're really beautiful, Lyon!”

“It's alright. Let's show them to Ephraim. You move like him when you fight, you know?”

There's a spiny pause between sentences.

 

***

 

Seth's blood gets to her legs, sickly warm.  _ Please break down, please, please break down or get me back to the castle, please, please _ , the only thing her hands can hold is the cold metal of her chest armor and Eirika feels she's sinking. 

When the first man she's ever killed lies in front of her she thinks of her brother and tastes bile bitter in her mouth.

 

***

 

“You think he's alright?”

Ephraim hasn't talked about their father, as if mentioning him would damn him, and he doesn't do it now. He's assumed, she knows from the way he bends his words under his tongue.

She reads the letters of a name he hasn't pronounced.

“Yes. You... When you find Lyon, talk to him. I'm sure he will listen, something, something must have happend”, she thinks maybe that should have been an _if_ , not a _when_ , but suppresses the thought.

“He'd listed to you better. You know how to talk to people and I—”

“Then why don't you take me with you?”

Please don't go away.

(She'll hold up right on her own, she does, but there's something in the words around her, cutting like arrows,  _ for your safety, for your safety _ ).

 

_***_

 

Lyon grabs her wrist and his hands are still delicate and cold but her primal instinct ignites the words: don't come any closer, go away; he's breathing, moving all wrong; through his mouth, in audible sighs that go too deep inside him, shaking a rib cage that barely holds in its place, he smells of iron and burnt flesh and clothes.

Yet his voice is the same and that's why it sounds out of place (so do his clothes, the same clothes he wore around them, now clashing against skin that looks like it's a cover-up), silky against his teeth specked with blood and something black like his hands.

“Eirika”, he says. It's oddly reassuring, “Eirika, please—”

“Lyon, I'm sure I can help you”, _he needs it_ , he looks so bewildered when she tells him that, “I'll explain my soldiers and we will help you, don't worry. Just tell me what you need, what happened.”

“Eirika. Eirika, I love you. Whatever happens, I'm your friend”, he presses on her hand just once.

He doesn't go with her.

(He didn't have the right to tell her that, tearing the words from his heart like that, turning her name into a spell; when Ephraim says Lyon didn't look  _ human _ she understands right away).

 

***

 

At the other end of her sword, Lyon looks like the innermost part of a forest fire: blinding and dark (and everything that holds him up, his bones and veins almost visible, twisted and charred, consumed), almost surreal.

“Lyon”, she says, “don't make me do this”.

The voice that comes from his throat is otherworldly and profound, she hears it like she'd hear it from the grave of a hanged man, from the vocal chords of a wolf, and it cuts on Lyon's throat (the words come out dirty and bloodied) because it can't support it; but it's not talking to her, Lyon's not looking at her and his pupils looks so black they could swallow them both.

 

***

 

Eirika holds her brother against her because it seems like the heat of mount Neleras can't get to them; she reads the motivation for Ephraim trembling hands when he closes them on her back.

 

***

 

Lyon's body surrenders on her, and she can see, like a curse flaring on her eyes, the curve of his cape covering her blade; her sword has gone in and out of him with almost no resistance, with almost no sound.

The tingling of her earrings eats up the last cracklings of him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is longer than the others because I'm totally not picking favorites!
> 
> But really, I'm kinda peeved Eirika got kind of wonky writing on her route - characters get more development there, we get a tad more insight into some stuff, but Lyon and the plot are sorta weak compared to her brother's side. I tagged this with canon divergence mostly because I changed that Lyon to fit the one I've been writing in the other two parts, which made me sort of rewrite him. I definitely changed the dialogue they share!
> 
> The first bit is my favorite, and I spent a bunch of time coming up with a present. Thanks to my friend Mele for not being terrible at silly, sorta fluffy details.
> 
> And that's it for Rete Mirabile! The series title means 'net of wondrous things/things that are impossible to explain". Thanks for reading!


End file.
